Windows Phone 8 Tip: Fix the Me Tile

The Me tile in Windows Phone 8 holds a special place in the hearts of minds of Windows Phone 8 users. But what is this thing, exactly? And if you mistakenly un-pin the tile from the Start screen how can you get it back?

The Me tile is the place you go in Windows Phone to post updates to your connected social networking services, check-in via Facebook, or look at the notifications that occur when other people online comment or post to you. It’s one of those integrated experiences that’s so common in Windows Phone, and as you use this system, you grow to rely on it.

The Me tile is part of the default set of tiles you’ll find on the Windows Phone 8 Start screen. But unlike most of the other default tiles, this one falls into a unique category. That is, rather than having a one-to-one relationship with an app (as the Calendar tile does with the Calendar app, and so on), the Me tile is really what’s called a deep link. That is, it’s a sort of secondary tile for the encompassing app.

(The other example of this, in the default Windows Phone 8 tile set, is the Outlook Mobile, or Mail, app. You don’t actually run Mail directly. Instead, Mail creates a deep link tile for each email-based account you create in Windows Phone. So instead of Mail, you’ll see tiles like Hotmail, Outlook, and Gmail.)

What Me really is, is a secondary tile, or a deep link, to a special contact card that is created when you sign in with your primary Microsoft account at the time you set up your phone. And that means two things. One, you can access the Me “app” (really just a special contact card) from within the People hub. And two, if you mistakenly remove, or unpin, the Me tile from the Start screen, you can get it back.

Oops! I deleted the Me tile!

You can find this Me contact card in the People hub by navigating to the All panel. There, at the top, you’ll see a special live tile representing you and, if you’ve connected a Facebook or Twitter account to the device, your most recent social networking update.

Tap that tile to access the Me card. You’ll see that it looks and works exactly as it does when you launch Me from the Start screen.

And if you have unpinned Me from the Start screen, simply tap the Pin app bar button to bring it back.

Discuss this Article 5

Never used it. Deleted almost right away. Don't think I need it. I use this phone to be productive, and when I hooked up my Facebook account, it populated by contacts with everyone that I don't need in a contacts folder, making it impossible to find the right person without doing a multiclick search. So, no facebook, so now I don't need this tile anymore.

The Me tile/contact card is indeed a great Windows Phone feature. Too bad it is not also:
- a real "me" contact card like other contact cards where you keep all your contact info (that you could share/send to others)
- a link to your outlook.com profile where you manage payment and skydrive storage for example.

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